


Pebble

by rockboys



Category: Atonement (2007)
Genre: 1930s, 1940s, Gen, Gen Work, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, Lost Love, Purple Prose, a bit - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 02:45:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/907980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rockboys/pseuds/rockboys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A re-imagining of the events of Atonement.<br/>If Briony was wrong when she was a child, then how can we be sure she was correct as a teenager?<br/>In this story Paul Marshall is not the rapist. The events unfold similarly, but they are told in regards to Paul's experiences and his guilt following that night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pebble

Paul Marhsall was a good friend to Leon, and a good son to his father. He worked hard and did everything expected of him. He knew he was a good man, but he always had trouble making other people believe it.

At the pond, part of the expansive grounds at Leon's childhood home, he felt out of place between the siblings who had so much history. As he usually experienced with women Cecilia was quick to judge him. He tried his best to be nice so she would overcome her indifference despite him knowing that she wasn't likely to warm up to him .

Once they had decided to abandon the water for the cool of the shade inside the house he tried again at impressing Cecilia. The peace offering of his famous chocolate cocktails had been met with disdain and disinterest. This was, again, expected. Especially from a young woman whose parent's owned a lovely manor.

For the rest of the afternoon he found himself relegated to looking after the children: Lola and Pierrot and Jackson, with their fancy names and fancy parents. He had read, of course, as everyone had about the split. Lola had asked him what he had heard, but when he started to talk she scolded him as if he was telling them something they didn't already know.

Paul had never been very good with children, and his inadequacy became even more obvious as he tried to placate the boys later that evening. The boys, whom he had found terrorising their sister just before the sun began to set. He had pulled them off her, but not without receiving a scratch across the face in the scuffle. Their single mindedness created a knot inside Paul, something about the children's unwavering focus gave him fear. When he told them off, to go find somewhere else to play, they parroted their father's voice: _boys will be boys._

The look in Lola's eyes told him it wasn't the first time she'd heard that excuse. He wanted to ask her; to comfort her, but instead he left so she could suffer the lasting pain from their teasing alone.

At dinner he felt more out of place than he had all day. There were things going on that he couldn't understand – glances between Leon and Ce; touches between Ce and Robby; averting of eyes from Lola when anyone tried to engage her. He did his best to explain what had happened with the twins, trying to make sure the situation was mollified. But in the end, he found that he still felt like he was imposing on the family.

Briony was doing no better, almost having spats with everyone across the table. Her actions reflected the frustration he felt inside. He couldn't put himself at ease because of the confusing relationships that he wasn't allowed to understand. He wasn't family. In that way, he sympathised with Briony and her annoyance at the exclusion which came with her youth.

Then the boys' note was found.  
They had run away. He wondered if his comments earlier had been the thing which made them feel so overwhelmed with their parents' situation. He wondered, if he had been more diplomatic would the situation still have arisen?

Setting out to find the twins they split up, Leon with Ce, Robbie with him. Robbie told him all about going to university with Cecilia, and with little pause he divulged the way he felt about her. Robbie was rambling, unable to keep his feelings in. It was as if someone, or something, had opened the floodgates within and now he could only manage to talk of her and nothing else.

Paul told Robbie about the chocolate factory. How he had decided to continue the legacy and make his father proud despite his own dreams. That was why he planned on manufacturing the Army Amo bar to be included in ration packs for all soldiers. That way he would be doing something for the oncoming war effort. The problem was that if they made the deal he'd have to start organising three more factories to keep up with the demand. It was good for business, he admitted.  
But it was, and always would be, his father's business.

Robbie was surprisingly well read and spoken, for a housekeeper's boy. Paul liked the grittiness hiding underneath Robbie's properly annunciated words and freshly pressed suit. The unrefined parts of him gave him some bite; there was something more to him than the to usual toffs he spent his time with. Robbie agreed with him about conscription, and he liked that too – being agreed with.

When they heard the boys down on the other side of the pond Robbie pressed on ahead alone. “I've lived here my whole life,” he said, “I can manage in the dark.”

For fear of slipping, Paul hung back. Once the bob of Robbie's flash light was out of view and he could no longer hear the snap of twigs from underfoot he decided to turn around. He would let everyone know the boys were with Robbie, and maybe get one of the housekeepers to prepare a hot bath for them. He could check on Briony, left all alone in the house, and see if Leon and Ce had given up yet.

Upon arriving back at the house he became witness to another scene he didn't quite understand. Accusations were flown, and when he mentioned that Robbie had gone off alone he realised his mistake. The statement seemed to hang in the air joining with everybody else's assumptions, giving it more weight than when the words had left his mouth. He had tried to argue, to take back the words but he was not family, and so there was no more argument to be had. Cecilia believed him, but Briony's conviction outweighed them both. The headstrong determination of a child who didn't know that not everything was always as it seemed.

Paul was shocked that everyone was willing to believe the worst about Robbie in an instant. Despite all their years together he was still just the housekeeper's son.

He knew the timing didn't quite fit, but he couldn't work it out. He didn't have a better explanation, he just knew that the one Briony had given was wrong.

When Robbie returned he was full of pride with the boys in tow. The house crept up on him like the changing of seasons. With their breaths held, Paul and Leon and Briony and Ce, they watched as his face turned down in confusion.

When he was carted away Robbie's mother could be heard screaming halfway down the drive. Cecilia's strangled cry ripped through the night air like a wound.

Paul said nothing.

The fighting had been done and lost and he knew that more words from him would not help now. For years he would think back to that moment and wonder if he could have done more for Robbie; if he could have been more like Robbie.

Over the years he stayed in touch with Lola, and even Cecilia occasionally. Leon dropped out of his circles, making it difficult to keep up with him.

The war came and he had to open new factories. He was busy, but he made time for the broken girl who had curled herself away. Lola had learned from her past and so when she was expected to trust she expected to be hurt. That warm summer's night had irreparably damaged her. Paul had known this before Lola.

If she had been younger maybe she could have forgotten what it was like, treated it like a dream as he had done with the horrid things from his childhood. But she was already a woman when that something was taken from her, unable to grow anything in the place where her innocence had been.

He had offered to marry her. To let her live being loved by him, with no expectation of what she might do in return. He understood, all those years later, what part he had played. He understood when he asked for her hand that he could have stopped it before it begun. His payment was to try fixing her, to love her until it filled the hole he helped create.

She had said no – the pressure of his popularity too much for her to agree to. “How can I be your wife?” she had asked, “When all I want to do is hide away?”

When she left him, cutting off all ties, he thought back to the weeks leading up to that night. The conversations he had had with Leon over scotch had then seemed strange or funny but now became so clear. “If you know what I mean.”

In 1939 he made contact with Cecilia again to ask if she had kept in touch with Robbie. She wrote him a letter explaining how she had disowned her family. Ce wrote about Briony studying to become a nurse, like she had, as if that was enough for them to become family again. He found out about Robbie's release into the army and he thought back to the evening in the dark; his talk with Robbie about the war and his plans to become a doctor. He could never be a doctor now.

Conscription had been reintroduced and many of his friends were shipped off. He breathed selfish relief until his 23rd birthday when he outgrew the age limit. He celebrated with a glass of scotch and the unwelcome irony of being too old to have the war turn him into a man. When they expanded the age range and Paul received his call-up papers he cried.

He thought of Robbie's life and ambition stolen from him. Cecilia who no longer had a family. Lola, destined to be a spinster, was not the only one who lost something that night. Even Briony had lost her integrity, her virtue forever tarnished with one lie.  
Paul wasn't sure what he had left.

Before he left he transferred his company's interests into Lola's name. No family was around to take it from him and he had men working to keep the place running smoothly. She would be able to focus on the job – an excuse to be alone. She pressed a chaste kiss to his lips before he left, a prayer that he not return in a box.

The war was cold and dirty. He began to smell of French soil and French mud and French horse shit. His boots were caked in the stuff, boots he hadn't taken off in days.

They walked for weeks, his legs numbing to the ache of cold and pain and relentless movement. They walked through day and night because when they tried to sleep the sound of artillery gunfire kept them roused enough to never truly rest. They walked up hills and down hills and along flat open fields that seemed to stretch to the horizon. Through rain and sleet and smoke, abandoned towns and rows of dead, Paul had only his onward steps and his thoughts.

The first dead body he saw was a child's. She was naked. He thought again of innocence; the choice between living without it and death. What would he chose? What would Lola have chosen, had she known?

The war seemed endless. There was only ever more of it to come. When they fought at Dunkirk he prayed to be left there. The weight of his guilt was too much, and his penance was to die cold and alone with no one to grieve for him.

He survived the battle, retreating to the beach with his regiment. They waited on the sand like a held breath, neither truly alive nor dead. Possibly both. It was on the last day of evacuation that he heard the name, “Robbie Turner,” cutting through the other voices. He looked over the sea of boys, all wearing the same dirty faces, searching for the sound again.

When Paul finally found Robbie he was lying, twisted into himself, almost unconscious. His company-man had regaled the story of their trek across the countryside. The French farmers who helped them, and the death and ruin that mirrored his own war. How he'd left Robbie, fevered and dying, to sleep and dream himself to somewhere better.

“Robbie,” Paul said, soft so as not to startle him. There was no response from the man, his breathing slowing and his forehead running hot.

“Robbie,” he repeated, “It's Paul Marshall.”

Inside Robbie's coat Paul found a bundle of letters. Some from Ce; some yet to be delivered back to her. There was a postcard of a cottage on the seaside. It was tranquil and empty, so unlike the beach their war had come to rest upon.

Robbie clutched to the letters and the postcard with the last of his strength. His grubby fingers streaking dirt and blood across the picturesque scene. His hand seized, crumpling the papers, before he seemed to relax. “Cecilia,” he breathed out, letting go of the word like a prayer or a promise.

Paul took the letters into his coat along with new resolve to return home. He would deliver to Cecilia the last words of her stolen love. He would give her back something she might have lost forever.

On the way back half his Battalion was lost when their ships were bombed. Any man's life not already lost to disease was lost at sea. Their futures stolen from them for trying to protect their families.

When Paul arrived back in England the troops were loaded into buses and carted to the hospital. It was chaos there. After the held breath of the days before Paul felt dizzy. He couldn't focus on his feet, finding it hard to walk. He couldn't see faces amongst the crowd, only wounds and blood and walking corpses.

Then he saw her. Blonde hair cut short; mole making her unmistakable. He wanted to lash out but he felt like any movement could rip him apart. He found himself not caring.

As he tried to focus Leon's words repeated in his head. The same six that had haunted him every night as he tried to sleep while men were killed only miles away.

“If you know what I mean.”

Leon's voice low and slurred with drink.

“If you know what I mean.”

The way he leered like a predator over its prey.

Paul felt sick. He was still dizzy from breathing English air again, or maybe still rocked by Leon's words. He only now, too late, knew what Leon had meant.

Briony's face in the crowd centred him, giving him something to direct his rage toward. He moved slowly, deliberately, at her. She stayed still, aware of him and waiting.

“Robbie?” was all she said, when he was finally close enough to hear the choked whisper.

He shook his head taking out the letters, proof that Robbie was no longer able to carry them for himself. She reached out instinctively, wanting to touch them, to touch something true. He recoiled, stepping away from her. He didn't know what to say, torn between blaming her lie and his own impotence.

They stood for a moment not saying anything, both remembering that night and the way Robbie hadn't said anything as he was pulled away from Cecilia and into the car.

“She's living in Balham,” Briony started.

Paul cut her off, “I know.” His fingers tapped lightly on the addressed letters as he quelled himself.

He turned then, not saying anything more, and headed away from her, from the unpleasantness of their past. She called after him but he didn't hear.

He found the place, saw the number on the letterbox and knew it was the right one. At the door, still in his uniform and feeling dirty, he asked for her but she wasn't home. He was let into her apartment and while the landlady watched on he left the letters on her table, a memory of their future.

Later that year a letter came to the factory's headquarters, addressed to him with the word 'urgent' scrawled across the top. He knew what it was before he even read the words. Cecilia had died in the Blitz. Briony had written to him in half truths letting him know _at least they are together now, at last they can be together_.

Briony's lie had been like a pebble. Small and hard, perfect in it's simplicity.

“I saw him.”

As it was dropped from her lips the ripples fanned out. Over years they spread, unable to be reined back in.

Paul burned the letter and watched as the words blackened and disappeared into the air. He wished they could have taken with them the injustice of those left with their lives: Briony and Leon who didn't deserve theirs; Lola who didn't want hers.

And him.  
Somewhere in between, unsure if he could ever be fully absolved; not sure if he deserved it.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this post:  
> http://boysrockboys.tumblr.com/post/54597133334/from-small-island


End file.
